


Musings on Mary and Moran and what she really did 5 years ago….

by BitterestRegret (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Mary's Past, Meta, TJLC | The Johnlock Conspiracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 06:31:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4337561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/BitterestRegret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Mary Morstan was stillborn in October 1972. Her gravestone is in Chiswick Cemetery where – five years ago – you acquired her name and date of birth and thereafter her identity”. </p><p>So what happened 5 years prior...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Musings on Mary and Moran and what she really did 5 years ago….

**Author's Note:**

> I blame any typos on my cat biting my hand as I was typing

So, to begin what do we really know about Mary?

-she is a liar;  
-she was an intelligence agent;  
-she went free-lance and did wet work (assassinations);  
-likely not English, probably American;  
-on the run from something; and,  
-she used her skills to disappear.

There is much speculation in the fandom that: 

a) she worked for Moriarty in some capacity, for example as one of his snipers at the pool, helping to fake his death on the roof at Bart’s, being planted to watch John to confirm Sherlock’s death was genuine etc.; and,  
b) Mary is the Moran character from canon i.e., Jim’s left hand (wo)man. 

I will examine these two theories, and I will tell you now, the conclusion I came to was certainly not what I was expecting (TBH I had an extremely lame Sherlock style revelation and almost drove off the road) . 

***

Mary worked for Moriarty:

The first theory we will look at posits that Mary (A.G.R.A) was one of Moriarty’s employees, in particular a sniper. This is consistent with her being an demonstrably excellent shot. Furthermore, being in Moriarty’s employ would certainly provide a number of opportunities for “wet work”.

This theory is a pretty popular one, and what convinced me, oddly enough, was her reaction to the “Miss Me” video when the following exchange takes place between John and Mary:

MARY: But he’s dead. I mean, you told me he was dead, Moriarty.  
JOHN: Absolutely. He blew his own brains out.  
MARY: So how can he be back?  
(HLV Transcript, Ariane Devere)

The unprompted clarification there of “I mean, you told me” sounds like she believed he was dead and not just because John told her so…. John already knows she was an assassin so if pressed she could have admitted that she heard it through one of those contacts. It looks like she misspoke and is back-tracking so that John won’t pose any follow-up question regarding who told her, or why they were talking about Moriarty in the first place.

Another suggestive piece of evidence is this dialogue in HLV:

MARY: Everything about who I was is on there. If you love me, don’t read it in front of me.  
JOHN: Why?  
MARY: Because you won’t love me when you’ve finished …  
(HLV Transcript, Ariane Devere)

I don’t know about you guys, but being an assassin for hire and shooting John’s best friend in the heart (regardless of whether she intended for him to die) are both pretty spectacularly terrible things to do. What could possibly be worse than that?

Keep in mind that is has to be something so bad that she a) lied about it, b) shot Sherlock, c) threatened Sherlock at the hospital, d) brought a silenced weapon to meet Sherlock at the empty house, e) hurt and killed people who are still out for her blood (per Magnussen) and f) had no intention of ever telling John the truth.

With respect to f) not everyone will agree with me, but I think the AGRA thumb-drive is probably blank (a shout-out to the empty box that was supposed to contain the Agra treasure in ACD’s “The Sign of Four”).

So what could be that bad? Lying to someone with major trust issues? Oops, been there done that. Murder? Assassinations for money? No wait she already admitted to both. Shooting someone John deeply cares about? No wait - she already did that too. 

The way I see it, there are only a few possibilities for “something worse” that John does not already know about:

1 - She knew Sherlock was alive and did not tell John. That would be douche-baggery in its highest form but would that be unforgivable? Probably not. Molly, Mycroft, 25 tramps, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, and Sherlock all did that too and John managed to move past it.

2 - She was a kitten torturing cannibal who hates tea. I suppose that works but how likely is that? This show is clever so whatever it is, odds are when we look back we will say, “Oh that makes sense.” If/when we find out her crimes I cannot imagine it will be just a random horrific thing that no one saw coming.

i.e., Mary: “I admit it – I sunk the Costa Concordia, mwahaha”

 John: “You monster!”

3 - She murdered a child in cold blood. I would say that would be unforgivable in anyone’s book, and would certainly inspire people to take revenge, but at the same time it does seems a little much as compared to the overall tone of the show so far. Also, as with point #2 there has not been any foreshadowing for that (that I noticed). I would think if this were the case that someone would have alluded to something like “how safe do you feel with her around a baby” or “you trust her with your life, but do you trust her with your child’s” etc. etc.

4 - She is related to Moriarty i.e., sister, aunt etc. This does have potential. This would be shocking to John and potentially unforgivable. This is also consistent with her telling John “who I was” as opposed to saying “the things I have done”. On the other hand you can stop being an assassin but you can not stop being someone’s sister/cousin etc. Furthermore, Magnussen states that she was CIA first and then implies that later she went free-lance. Employment with the CIA requires the applicant to be an American Citizen which makes it less likely (although not impossible) that she has an Irish relative that she was close enough to emotionally that she felt culpable for his crimes.

The only thing left that seems to fit is that she worked with/for Moriarty. I think this is the most likely scenario.

***

Mary is Moran:

The second theory is a simple extension of the first. Not only did Mary work for Moriarty but Mary is the modern equivalent of ACD’s Moran.

The thinking behind this is as follows. In ACD canon, Moran is known as “the second most dangerous man in London”. But where is he in BBC Sherlock?

He first appears in TEH, where he is characterized by Sherlock as “Lord Moran, peer of the realm, Minister for Overseas Development. Pillar of the establishment” and it is noted that “He’s been working for North Korea since 1996” (see Ariane DeVeres’s transcript). He is revealed later in the episode to be the one behind the missing train carriage and the plot to destroy Parliament. 

It strikes me that Moriarty’s tiger-hunting “chief of staff” seems a little under-utilized in the narrative.

So what suggests that Mary is functionally Moran? The main argument for this is that Mary has taken on Moran’s primary characteristic (sniper) and the scene in the empty house in HLV is a clear shout out to the scene with Moran in ACD’s “The Empty House”. For more detail on this I suggest you check out these entries on Tumblr: 

• Theses on HLV, (Or, Mary Mor[st]an & Other Theories) sylviatiejens / wsswatson.    
• My Mary Moran theory (everyone’s got one), drinking cocoa

On the flip side though, you would think that if Moriarty did have a shadowy figure who was his second in command, Sherlock and or/ Mycroft would have heard about it and as in ACD’s “The Empty House” would try to take them down before they would consider the network dismantled.

Except for that pesky detail, the idea of Mary as Moran fit so well that when I first started writing this I was almost convinced of the following:

-Mary was one of the snipers at the pool in TGG  
-She was one of the snipers assigned to watch John and Sherlock in TRF.  
-She was assigned by Moriarty / Moriarty’s network to watch John to ensure that Sherlock was legitimately dead. (As a side note, this theory is compatible with either Mary starting a relationship on someone’s orders and falling in love by accident, or starting a relationship with John of her own accord.)

I even had a head-canon that she was the one who addressed the envelope to Sherlock in TGG (the handwriting that Sherlock remarked was feminine). Although I suppose it is just as likely that Moriarty has/had effeminate handwriting. I could just imagine Mary slipping up and writing something down in front of Sherlock and him having an epiphany when he recognizes the penmanship. 

I was looking for support for this by browsing Tumblr, when I stumbled across a post by ‘A World of Pure Imagination’ (I unfortunately can’t find the link to this) where the author points out that Sherlock tells Mary in HLV that “she took the name 5 years ago”. The author then speculated that this would be roughly when the pool incident happened i.e., that Mary would have been one of the snipers.

I was (obviously) intrigued, but does that work? Per Ariane DeVere’s invaluable transcripts (HLV Transcript) Sherlock says: “Mary Morstan was stillborn in October 1972. Her gravestone is in Chiswick Cemetery where – five years ago – you acquired her name and date of birth and thereafter her identity”. 

So what does that tell us? Per the first theory, there is pretty compelling evidence that Mary worked for Moriarty, and per the second theory, it is very likely that Mary is Moran. But something happened 5 years prior that caused A.G.R.A. to give up her “work” and start a new life as Mary Morstan. But at the same time, she had to keep the tools of the trade (pistol, black jump suit etc.) handy. We also know that she is “on the run” from something or someone and she was willing to come out of retirement and kill Magnussen to protect her identity as Mary Morstan. I then started to ask myself, what happened 5 years prior? And why specify the date at all if it was irrelevant? There is never any wasted dialogue in the show and it would have been just as effective for Sherlock to say “Mary Morstan was stillborn in October 1972. Her gravestone is in Chiswick Cemetery where you acquired her name and date of birth and thereafter her identity”. This would actually have improved the narrative as it would leave the audience in suspense as to exactly how long she had been pretending to be Mary Morstan for. 

Since our best guess (see http://bakerstreet.wikia.com/wiki/Sherlock_Timeline) is that the events from HLV take place sometime in the summer of 2014, this would mean that this identity was assumed during the summer of 2009. Canonically the events of TGG took place on April 1, 2010; A.G.R.A. would have already been living as “Mary” for around a year. For her to have been one of the snipers at the pool or involved in TRF she would have to have been working for Moriarty in the Morstan identity. This is where the theory fell apart for me. For one, continuing to work as a sniper under the new identity would entirely defeat the purpose of taking on a false identity and starting a new life. Furthermore, as one of Moriarty’s employees, after Moriarty’s death/“death” she would have been ideally positioned to notice that the remnants of the web were being dismantled piece by piece and that whomever was doing so was moving closer and closer to London. She would have to be a little worried that someone would be coming for her next. The most logical thing to do would be to change her identity again and disappear, not to stick around as Mary Morstan. The logical conclusion was that while A.G.R.A likely worked for Moriarty, Mary Morstan did not.

So canonically what happened in the summer of 2009? 

Dr. John Watson, Captain in the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers was shot in the left shoulder while serving in Afghanistan. In ACD canon this was during the battle of Maiwand (also Afghanistan). 

Who else was in Afghanistan? According to ACD canon – Colonel Sebastian Moran. 

If we go back to the second theory that Mary IS Moran we can theorize that she too was in Afghanistan, presumably working as a sniper, and presumably in the employ of Moriarty. This would have given her the opportunity to shoot John and then have a crisis of conscience and decide to leave her life as A.G.R.A and ties to Moriarty behind. 

This also ties up my earlier question about what happened to Moran quite nicely. If Moran/A.G.R.A was Jim’s second in command why didn’t Sherlock and or/ Mycroft take them down while they were dismantling the network? – Because Moran/A.G.R.A already left Moriarty’s employ in 2009 by presumably faking her death and reinventing herself as Mary Morstan…

I think that would be pretty unforgivable to find out that she a) worked for Moriarty and b) was the one responsible for the loss of both John’s army career and his ability as a trauma surgeon…

J’accuse Mary! J’accuse!


End file.
